Question

Ok so at work we have discovered that this method to fetch related data / objects is something near awesome.

Right to example, i have this class with some related objects inside:

class Country {

private $language; //$language will be an object of class Language
private $regions; //$regions will be an ARRAY of Region objects

//in the constructor i don't load regions or language

//magic method
    public function __get($name) {

        $fn_name = 'get_' . $name;

        if (method_exists($this, $fn_name)) {
            return $this->$fn_name();
        } else {
            if (property_exists($this, $name))
                return $this->$name;
        }

        return $this->$name;
    }

    public function get_language () {

        if (is_object($this->language)) return $this->language;

        $this->language = new Language($params); //example

        return $this->language;
    }

    public function get_regions () {

        if (is_array($this->regions)) return $this->regions;

        $this->regions = array();

        $this->regions[] = new Region('fake');
        $this->regions[] = new Region('fake2');

        return $this->regions;
    }
}

so the idea is:

i want an instance of Country, but i dont need its language and regions now.

In another case i need them, so i claim them as properties, and the magic method retrieves them for me only the first time.

$country = new Country();

echo "language is". $country->language->name;

echo "this country has ". sizeof($country->regions)." regions";

This on-demand method (that avoids nested loop of related objects too) has a name?
Maybe lazy loading properties? On-demand properties?

Answer 1

In another case i need them, […] retrieves them for me only the first time.

Initialize would be the proper wording. This is called Lazy Initialization.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazy_initialization

so i claim them as properties, and the magic method retrieves them

This is called Overloading of properties.

http://php.net/__get

EDIT:

I don’t think there’s a term for a combination of the two. You can just combine both and get something like “Lazy initialization of properties through overloading“.